I released the "Formant Classic" in august 2010 and in the meanwhile I have been redeveloping this synth. The artikel however came a little bit to soon to mention about the new upcomming version. So I inform you about this through this artikel.

Formant Classic Advanced
In the "Formant classic advanced" I added some new non formant modules and improved the classic modules. An other feature I worked on (with blood sweat an tears) is a 100% automatic vst host syncing capability. This enables you to sync arpegiator, sequencer and LFO's to the host tempo and song position.

New non "Formant" modules

• 3 Mix Modules To combine modulation and/or audio signals and use them as new modulations.
• 1 Effect module with Chorus/Flanger, Ring Modulator, Synced Stereo Cross Delay and Reverb.
• a 32 cell polyphonic sequencer with seperate Pitch, Gate and Modulation strips
• a polyphonic Arpegiator that can use sequencer cells for special arpegiations.

• 1 COM module for bass, middle and trebble adjustment plus extra distortion.
• New 6,12,18,24dB LP/HP filter conform the original formant design
• Better ballanced RFM module with softclip for special destortions
• 1 S&H and Ring Modulater Module

Although the source code is downloaded many times, I did not get much feedback and decided to finalizse the design my self. The result is a freeware version of this program that you can download and use free of charge. Both a standalone .EXE and a .DLL VSTi plugin version are included in the package.

In 4 one hour sessions Denis Meyer and I, talked about the history and the future of the Formant Synthesizer. This synthesizer was one of the biggest electronic building projects of the magazine published in 1978/79. I based the "HV-Formant" and the "Formant Classic" software synthesiser on this legendary building project. Denis talked about the history and the importance of the Formant, the way he as a music teacher got interested in electronic music and how many people still have warm feelings about this great project and electronic music making in general. In the second part of the seminar I talked about my experience in building the Formant in the early eighty's and about the new technologies that are available today, that allowed me to rebuild this legendary synth into two software emulated versions.

Based on the interest of the audience and their positive reactions, I feel that there is an enormous interest among people, both young and old to actively participated into new electronic music related DIY projects.

If you are interested or curious, you can download the complete "Formant Classic" (a software version of the original formant) and the tools it was build with from here.

I want to thank the Elektor team and specially Denis Meyer for giving me the opportunity to express my ideas for such a large audience and hope that in the near future new electronic music making projects wil arive.